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According to MacRumors, they have confirmation that the next generation iPad will have a retina display with four times the pixels (2048 x 1536) of the current iPad2. Do we need that many pixels in a tablet? Not necessarily, but Apple clearly needs to demonstrate that they can continue to remain ahead of competing tablets. Taking a page from the digital camera playbook they are throwing pixels at the problem. I think there are some benefits and some drawbacks to the plan. Here's a score card:

Pros:

Unbelievably vivid images: At more than 200 pixels per inch, the retina display will give photographs a life-like level of detail. And the rumored 8 megapixel camera will be a ready source for such images.

Electronic paper: Ink on paper is generally at 300 dots per inch, but given the physical properties of printing (i.e., schemer) the super crisp 264 ppi display (not quite as high as the iPhone 4GS's 326 ppi) will have print quality resolution. Digital magazine publishers (and their advertisers) will love this.

Home Theater in Your Lap: Assuming the chip can support it (which the rumored quad-core A6 processor would) this screen can display full 1080 HD movies (1920 x 1080 pixels) with room for navigational chrome.

The Rise of Responsive: The higher damands of a subset of mobile devices will quicken the development of responsive web design, particularly in terms of the variable delivery of images based on device pixel dimensions.

Cons:

Your (No Longer Unlimited) Data Plan: Since providers have been phasing out unlimited data plans it is likely that you will be feeding all those pixels from a metered dataplan. Ouch!

The Rising Cost of Media: If content producers heed Neil Young's seemingly contradictory defense and assault on piracy—high resolution media, whether music or movies or images—will cost more—and people will buy it, selectively. Like font designers who are finally getting paid because of the increased use of web fonts, hopefully photographers will find a resurgence in the demand for high-quality photography once everyone is walking around with high-resolution displays. (This is a pro within the con, at least for pros.)

That Giant Sucking Sound: Where, exactly is all this bandwidth going to come from? How much of the earth's energy will be devoted to the additional server farms required to deliver all of this glorious resolution? Who's going to pay for it? Ultimately we all are, I'm afraid.

Copyright Concerns: Take Pinterest, for example. If third party websites make high-resolution copies of all of the image that their users post (as Pinterest does) the possibilites of copyright infringement go up exponentially. Relative to the rising cost of media (above) one can imagine content producers giving away low-resolution proxies of their work for free but charging for the high-resolution experience. But what happens as those high-resolution files fall out of their owners control?

There are many opportunities that will be created by heightening consumer's desire and demand for higher-resolution content experiences, but as in space, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so tighten your seat belts and hang on!